Case study KDDI Corporation

Case study KDDI Corporation

» An in-memory database for high-speed processing is essential to our business. Because this means we need a large amount of memory, the M10 was attractive to us for being able to deliver a large memory capacity at a comparatively low cost.« Dr. Toshio Kato, General Manager, Evolved Packet Core Network Development Department, Network Technical Development Division, Technology Sector, KDDI

The customer As a major company making major strides both in domestically and overseas, and with approximately 42 million subscribers, KDDI Corporation places a particular focus on providing content and other services for increasingly popular smartphones and tablets. A feature of many of these services is that they are available to subscribers whenever they want to use or view them, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To increase the number of users and views, KDDI has already introduced offers such as "App Torihodai" (all the apps you can use) as a part of its "au Smart Pass" fixed-price app service, a first for Japan.

The customer Among the system platforms that underpin KDDI's business model is the Session Management System that began operation in 2011. The Country: Japan purpose of this system is to check device session information against Industry: Telecommunications business subscriber contract status in realtime to verify that someone Founded: 1984 attempting to use a service is the genuine subscriber. By eliminating Website: http://global.kddi.com/ the risk of device spoofing, the system provides a wide variety of

services that are tailored to the verified subscriber. The challenge The challenge Content and other services have increased at KDDI. Original Toshio Kato, General Manager, Evolved Packet Core Network expectations were surpassed with the explosive growth of Development Department, Network Technical Development Division, applications such as games that initiate frequent communications in Technology Sector, KDDI, explains the importance of the system as the background. In spite of the fact that the initial system was follows. "The system is essential to services that handle subscriber and designed and built with sufficient margin for growth, there was contract information in realtime. If the system became unavailable, forewarning of insufficient capacity a year after the initial system subscribers would no longer be able to services whenever they began operation. wanted, and we would face a business risk due to the loss of

opportunity." The solution "Although we adopted an in-memory database solution (a database The requirements fell into three main categories, namely that holds data in the server's main memory) as a way of improving [1] a five-fold improvement in performance over the existing system, response times, we were unable to keep up with the dramatic rise in [2] the provision for further scalability on top of the five-fold the number of transactions per second," notes Dr. Kato. It became clear performance improvement, and [3] maintenance of business that processor and server capacity would need to be increased if continuity by establishing a backup site for disaster recovery. The response times were to be kept within a range acceptable to our users. aim was to create a system that could keep up with anticipated

future user growth

Page 1 of 3 www.fujitsu.com/sparc/casestudies

Case study KDDI Corporation

The solution In response, KDDI established a team to work on the problem in October 2012. They produced a list of the requirements for a request for proposals from a number of system integration companies.

Setting the high target of a five-fold improvement in performance was motivated by the rapid growth in the number of smartphone subscribers. Despite this ambitious target, Dr. Kato says, "This was when the Fujitsu M10 had just been introduced, and we knew that the SPARC64 processors used in the servers had evolved over many years. We believed that we could obtain even higher levels of performance by using Fujitsu M10 SPARC servers."

The Fujitsu M10 based Session Management System can respond rapidly

to subscriber information requests from update/reference servers using its in-memory database. The system was designed with a backup site for disaster recovery located several hundred or more kilometers away to ensure business continuity in the event of a major disaster.

The benefit After assessing various tenders, KDDI selected a server hardware configuration that consisted of Fujitsu M10 high-performance UNIX servers and PRIMERGY servers. Having made this choice, KDDI then began system integration, which included software installation of the Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database, which had already been proven in past applications, and XACK RADIUS to update data in the database. Fujitsu processor design team has been working on performance and reliability improvements and innovations over many years. The Running an in-memory database requires a lot of memory. Accordingly, SPARC64 X and SPARC64 X+ processors used in the Fujitsu M10 Fujitsu M10 servers with their large memory capacity were used to represent the leading edge of this process. boost in-memory database performance. A feature of the Fujitsu M10 is its high-speed access to a large memory area with double the speed of the memory bus in conventional servers. This speed advantage is Regarding scalability, particular importance was placed on the ability also proven by the Fujitsu M10 holding the world-record on the to expand the system capacity without stopping the IT resources on the STREAM benchmark for memory access performance in enterprise server, even after the system started production operations. As Mr. servers (as of April 1, 2015). Enoki explains, "Although designing and building a new system with five times the performance of the old one represented a realistic goal, Dr. Kato also comments on the hardware cost for memory, saying, “An recognizing the potential for demand growth to exceed expectations, in-memory database for high-speed processing is essential to our we sought to select a platform that would also be capable of further business. Because this means we need a large amount of memory, the expansion." Fujitsu M10 was attractive to us for being able to deliver a large memory capacity at a comparatively low cost.” Mr. Enoki comments KDDI's aim with building in redundancy by establishing a backup site that, “Because the Connection Information Management System needs for disaster recovery was to ensure that the Session Management to operate non-stop, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, we appreciate System could continue to operate even in the event of a major disaster. how the CPU core activation function enables the number of cores to This required establishing two systems with a master/backup be increased without shutting down the server. configuration located several hundred or more kilometers apart, and with a synchronization capability that could maintain data consistency between the respective databases. Unfortunately, the delays in exchanging data over the network that arise when sites are physically distant from each other also mean that there is a risk of the master and backup databases not being updated simultaneously. Another possible risk if database updates take too long is the loss of consistency during the switch between master and backup copies of the databases when a disaster strikes. Accordingly, the requirements for the second-generation system included the ability to synchronize The Fujitsu M10 provides a CPU core activation function for flexible databases located several hundred kilometers apart in realtime and performance upgrades while also optimizing database license costs. without loss of data.

Page 2 of 3 www.fujitsu.com/sparc/casestudies

Case study KDDI Corporation

The benefit Products and services ■ A five-fold improvement in performance over the existing system ■ Fujitsu M10-4 ■ Provision for further scalability on top of the five-fold performance ■ FUJITSU Server PRIMERGY improvement ■ Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database ■ Maintenance of business continuity by establishing a backup site ■ XACK RADIUS for disaster recovery ■ Replacement was done without compromising system availability by using CPU core activation ■ Fujitsu M10 servers with large memory capacity used to boost in-memory database performance ■ High-speed access to a large memory area with double the speed of the memory bus in conventional servers ■ Speed advantage is proven by the Fujitsu M10 holding the world-record on the STREAM benchmark for memory access performance in enterprise servers (as of April 1, 2015)

The PRIMERGY servers, meanwhile, are used to update connection from a business perspective was that new services could be planned information. XACK RADIUS runs on a number of PRIMERGY servers and and delivered without any performance concerns. And because access has a system configuration that enables the concurrent updating of to the Connection Information Management System is extremely fast, the databases running on Fujitsu M10 servers at two physically even at peak times, subscribers can enjoy content and other services separate sites, ensuring data consistency and availability even in the without getting frustrated by slow response times. event of a major disaster, while still providing high performance processing. To provide more accurate monitoring of in-memory database performance, KDDI developed a new log that monitors and presents The in-memory database solution on Fujitsu M10 servers was information on the number of transactions per second at a glance. This implemented quickly, taking only a year from the initial planning to enables a quick notification if an abnormal situation arises. the start of production. The testing was conducted on a test environment between April and July 2013. Based on the results of this Mr. Enoki says, “Even though we found ourselves in the need for testing, work started on building the production system in July 2013, capacity expansion again not long after the new system commenced and it began full operation in September 2013. operation, we were able to do this without compromising system availability by using CPU core activation.” Among the reasons the migration was able to be completed so quickly was the convenience of being able to maintain binary compatibility Dr. Kato says, “The second-generation Connection Information across operating system versions, something that was possible Management System continues to operate reliably and fulfill its role as because both old and new systems use Oracle Solaris operating system. one of the platforms that supports our business strategy. We have now As Mr. Enoki comments, “A major reason why we were able to get the moved on to the phase of thinking about when and how the system new Connection Information Management System up and running will be upgraded in response to growth in demand and other without delays was that Fujitsu system engineers and XACK engineers requirements, and how quickly we can recover it after a fault, disaster, were able to draw on their many years of experience when it came to or another problem occurs.” He also notes that the knowledge and solving the problems identified during testing and performing the experience of system scaling obtained through this project will be XACK RADIUS installation.” helpful to KDDI when upgrading other systems.

Conclusion Once in operation, the capacity of the second-generation Connection Information Management System satisfied KDDI’s expectations. Dr. Kato says, “After tuning the system, we succeeded in achieving our target of the five-fold performance improvement.” The major benefit

Contact © 2015 Fujitsu and the Fujitsu logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of FUJITSU Fujitsu Limited in Japan and other countries. Other company, product and service Address: Shiodome City Center names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. 1-5-2 Higashi-Shimbashi Minato-ku, Technical data subject to modification and delivery subject to availability. Any 105-7123 Japan. liability that the data and illustrations are complete, actual or correct is excluded. Phone Tel: +81-3-6252-2220 Designations may be trademarks and/or copyrights of the respective manufacturer, Website: www.fujitsu.com/sparc the use of which by third parties for their own purposes may infringe the rights of 2015-7-30 such owner.

Page 3 of 3 www.fujitsu.com/sparc/casestudies